Report: Marketers Recognizing the Need for Multicultural Strategies

The CMO Council and Geoscape published a white paper on Sept. 1 titled, “Activating the New American Mainstream,” to show how marketers are creating strategies to best engage the country’s culturally diverse business industry.

According to the data, more than one-third of today’s American population is Asian-American, African-American or Hispanic. By 2020, these three groups will total nearly 130 million people.

Despite these statistics, researchers found that 80 percent of B2B marketers do not have a multicultural marketing initiative in place. While 66 percent of respondents said they have the support of their CMO to create a multicultural marketing strategy, about 60 percent said they lack support from their board of directors. Further, the majority (54 percent) said they allocate no more than 10 percent to multicultural marketing initiatives.

“By understanding cultural nuances and marketing in a proactive and data-driven manner, marketers are positioned to grow ROI,” said César M. Melgoza, Founder and CEO of Geoscape. “However, none of this happens overnight.”

That being said, data shows that marketers are not letting this opportunity fall by the wayside. Nearly 54 percent said they are deploying a “total market approach,” which targets all cultures through pooled resources. About 17 percent said they have at least one multicultural initiative that combines Hispanic, Asian-American and African-American with resources separate from overall market efforts.

Marketers Look to Penetrate Global Markets

The CMO Survey released last month honed in on exactly how much market penetration CMOs are forecasting in the near future. Within the next 12 months, respondents said they expect to spend 10 percent on a diversification strategy. Over the last 12 months, marketers said they spent 7 percent on diversification. This marks a potential 3 percentage point increase in the coming year.

Outside of the U.S., respondents see the biggest opportunities in China (19 percent), Western Europe (13 percent) and South America, with the exclusion of Brazil (8 percent).